Alex Rodriguez recently said that he would be “at peace” with whatever the organization decided to do with him in the future. That future has been made clear.
The Yankees and Rodriguez announced on Sunday morning that the slugger will be released following Friday’s game against Tampa Bay, and will stay with the team as a special adviser and instructor. The decision was reached solely by owner Hal Steinbrenner and Rodriguez, without input from (and seemingly without any heads-up given to) Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi.
Rodriguez’s tenure with the Yankees has been nothing if not eventful. Twelve of his 22 years in the big leagues have been spent in New York, and over that time he won two of this three MVP awards and made the All-Star team like clockwork. His titanic effort in the 2009 playoffs almost singlehandedly delivered the Yankees a World Series title.
Yet whether it was PEDs, or Madonna or the Manhattan Madame, A-Rod always had a knack for getting just as much ink for events that took place off the field as those that took place on it. His journeys into the seemingly bizarre and aloof grow larger and larger in the mind as memories of his laughable dominance of the sport fade. Gone is the gangly but strong teenage shortstop who was drafted first overall by the Mariners who cracked the big leagues at 18, replaced by a burnt-out shell of a contentious superstar.
He should have been everything the game could have dreamed of. In a way, he was. A-Rod was handsome and fabulously talented. He was a Yankee, the best player on the best team. But for some reason, it never happened. A-Rod was never the face, yet he was never truly the heel, either. He wasn’t Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds, but he never found the magic elixir for post-steroid adoration like Nelson Cruz, Bartolo Colon or David Ortiz did, either.
The production on the field was never an issue. Through 1506 games in pinstripes, A-Rod has hit .284/.378/.523. 351 of his 696 home runs have come as a Yankee, along with passable defense at a position he was forced to learn because an inferior defender refused to vacate his native shortstop.
With that production came an inescapable combination of the ego that comes with being anointed an athletics savant at a young age and a hungry, gnawing insecurity. The talent, try as it might, could not hide the personal imperfections of Rodriguez. In a way, it exacerbated them. The insecurities and pressures from his fellow players and from himself drove him to the steroids. His desire for unimpeachable greatness and for victory drove him to seemingly mad decisions and acts. It turned the media against him. It turned the league, who for so long had needed a far-reaching and global star not named Griffey or Jeter, to hound and hunt him. It was Rodriguez who served the longest PED suspension in league history, one which was handed down outside of the parameters of the established policy for such matters.
It was all of this that made his straight-laced boy scout return to baseball in 2015 so surreal. The scandal and outrage never manifested outside of the spirited boos heard at every ballpark outside of the Bronx when he came to the plate. A year away from the game had changed A-Rod, or at least it had changed his public face. Any candid photos from out in public usually involved the Yankee DH going somewhere with his young daughters. Somehow, he managed to hit 33 home runs in the same season that he celebrated his 40th birthday.
That same success is nowhere to be found this year. A-Rod has struggled to a ghastly .216 TAv in 234 plate appearances. Lately, it hasn’t been a question of what pitches he’s getting fooled on, but what he’s actually been able to connect with. The once-mighty slugger has been cowed by even the most pedestrian of pitchers.
And so, on Friday, A-Rod will don the pinstripes for one last ride. He may very well start some of, if not all three games in Boston, in a desperate rush to hit four final home runs and end his career at the nice round figure of 700. Then, he’ll be gone.
At one point in time it would have been curious to think of a post-Rodriguez Yankees. Here was a man who so perfectly encapsulated what the mid-2000’s teams were about. It was Rodriguez, not Derek Jeter, who was villainous, high-octane, ‘roided-up and endlessly overpaid. Jeter had the smile and the public relations instincts of a seasoned politician. A-Rod slapped the ball out of Bronson Arroyo’s glove, dated Cameron Diaz and became a news item in the midst of a World Series that he wasn’t even involved with.
That changed in the Yankees’ very own Year Without A Santa Claus in 2014. The only source of drama in 2014 was whether or not Cashman could patch his parboiled roster into a playoff team (he couldn’t). And yet, when Rodriguez did return the next year… nothing happened.
From a dramatics standpoint, life without A-Rod has been a fact for two and a half years. There is no great heel to be found on the Yankees. For most Yankees fans, the biggest heels they have in their lives these days are Jacoby Ellsbury’s contract and Greg Bird’s labrum. A-Rod is more of a team grandfather and baseball sage than a skulking figure with a syringe in the shadows.
What a loss of A-Rod does represent, however, is the severing of the last connection to the mid-2000’s super-teams, and another nail in the coffin of the days of The Boss. Brett Gardner will now be the longest-tenured Yankee, and the final man on left on the team who played in the old Yankee Stadium. Rodriguez is the latest Yankee casualty to Father Time and Cashman’s ruthless culling of the older big-money Yankees. He has claimed Mark Teixeira and Carlos Beltran already, and he will claim CC Sabathia next year. Do not be mistaken, as the team will surely begin to buy again, perhaps as early as this winter. It’s hard to imagine Steinbrenner resisting the temptation of dressing Kenley Jansen in pinstripes. But for now, youth is the flavor du jour.
A-Rod’s feel-good redemption story ending may very well give way to the promotion of Aaron Judge, who will be one of the faces of the next generation of Yankees. Gary Sanchez is already in the Bronx, already starting behind the plate, and already throwing out runners left and right. The trade of Carlos Beltran and the vacation of Rodriguez’s 40-man roster spot opens the door for Judge to step in and taste the big leagues for the first time.
And Rodriguez will help guide Judge and his fellow prospects up to the Show. Once the game on Friday comes to an end, A-Rod will traverse the minor leagues and serve as a sage elder to the cream of the crop of Yankees prospects. Given how much he helped Didi Gregorius grow into being a full-time shortstop and hitter, it’s exciting to think of him working with young talents such as Jorge Mateo and Gleyber Torres. A-Rod is one of the greatest hitters to ever live, and has spent his entire adult life in baseball. He was still growing up when he transcended the superstar title, and has an exceptional mind for the game.
This is a role perfectly suited for him. There is little doubt that A-Rod will thrive on the other side of the game. He has given everything that he can as a player. And though the door is not completely closed on him suiting up one more time (he hasn’t officially retired as a player), the development of Alex Rodriguez: Elder Statesman will be amusing indeed to watch.
As recently as 2014, it would have been unthinkable to imagine that the Yankees would keep Rodriguez on in such a capacity once he was through with playing for them. Heel A-Rod is gone, blown away on the winds of change. In a way, though, he was never really there. A-Rod was never Lenny Dykstra, or Barry Bonds, or Ty Cobb. His problem was that he wasn’t David Ortiz. He couldn’t make the people love him and forget his transgressions against the game. He couldn’t stop himself from going back to that destructive crutch, and the game he had mastered even before he touched the drugs hated him for it, and rightfully so.
Citizen A-Rod will be something we’ve never seen before, because he hid so well during his year away from the game. Friday will be his last day as a player for the Yankees. Saturday will be the first day of the rest of his life. The next chapter in the life of Alex Rodriguez is about to begin, and with it begins the next chapter for the Yankees.
Photo: Andy Marlin / USA Today Sports